The MK 82 and MK 200 are crit­i­cal com­po­nents of the Aegis mis­sile fire-con­trol system’s illu­mi­na­tor. The direc­tor posi­tions the fire con­trol sys­tem anten­na to illu­mi­nate the tar­get. The direc­tor con­troller MK 200 gen­er­ates the dri­ve sig­nals that posi­tion the direc­tor. The Aegis Com­bat Sys­tem is the most advanced tac­ti­cal radar defense and fire-con­trol sys­tem field­ed by the Navy to defend ships from anti-ship mis­sile threats.

This award mod­i­fies a con­tract orig­i­nal­ly issued in Sep­tem­ber 2010 by the Naval Sea Sys­tems Com­mand and pre­vi­ous­ly mod­i­fied in March, 2011. The new $6.9 mil­lion award increas­es the total con­tract val­ue to-date to $29.5 mil­lion. Under these con­tracts, the MK82 direc­tors and MK200 direc­tor con­trollers will be installed aboard ships built under the restart of the DDG 51 ship­build­ing pro­gram.

Pro­gram man­age­ment, assem­bly and test­ing of direc­tors and direc­tor con­trollers will begin in August at Gen­er­al Dynam­ics’ facil­i­ties in Ver­mont, which employs approx­i­mate­ly 400 peo­ple. The deliv­ery of all illu­mi­na­tor com­po­nents will be com­plet­ed by June 2013.

“Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Arma­ment and Tech­ni­cal Prod­ucts has a long record of afford­able pro­duc­tion and on-time deliv­ery of these crit­i­cal com­po­nents of the Aegis Sys­tem,” said Steve Elgin, vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er of arma­ment sys­tems. “The Aegis Weapon Sys­tem has played an impor­tant part in fleet defense for over 20 years. The sys­tem remains rel­e­vant today and will be viable for decades to come as part of the Mis­sile Defense Agency’s Inte­grat­ed Bal­lis­tic Mis­sile Defense capa­bil­i­ties.”